The Gen Z Conservative Who Won the Primary and Lost the War
NH-01, 2022. She beat the establishment pick and then ran into Chris Pappas.
In July 2021, a 23-year-old former Trump staffer announced she was running for Congress in New Hampshire's 1st Congressional District. The reaction from the professional class was roughly: cute, good luck.
She raised $100,000 in three days.
The primary: eating the establishment's lunch
Her main obstacle was Matt Mowers, a former State Department official and the 2020 nominee — the guy the national party wanted. Leavitt's play was simple and brutal: attack him as insufficiently pro-Trump. Not insufficiently conservative. Insufficiently Trump. That distinction is the entire story of Republican primaries in that cycle.
The endorsements piled up on her side: Ted Cruz, Lauren Boebert, Jim Jordan, Elise Stefanik. She branded herself as a "Generation Z conservative" — the young face of a movement everyone assumed was demographically doomed with her age cohort.
She won the September 2022 primary. Genuine upset. The establishment pick got beat by a 25-year-old.
The platform, plainly stated
- Lower taxes, fewer regulations on small business
- Challenge critical race theory in schools
- School choice
- Voter ID requirements
- Support Trump's immigration policies
- Oppose vaccine mandates
- Repeal Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act
That Section 230 plank is worth flagging — it's the law that shields online platforms from liability for user content. Repealing it was a fashionable right-wing position in 2022 and is genuinely radical in its implications for the internet. She also, memorably, closed the campaign with a gun shoot event. Subtlety was not the goal.
The general: reality check
Incumbent Democrat Chris Pappas beat her in November 2022. NH-01 is a swing district but 2022 was a bad year for candidates running hardest on 2020 election grievance, and Leavitt was one of them. She'd repeatedly echoed claims of fraud in the 2020 election throughout the run.
New Hampshire independents — and NH-01 runs on independents — did not bite.
The take: she lost the race and won the career
Here's the counterintuitive part. Losing NH-01 was probably the best thing that ever happened to her professionally. A freshman House member in the minority is a nobody for years. Instead she came out of 2022 with:
- National name recognition inside MAGA world
- A proven ability to take a punch on live television
- Verified loyalty in a movement that prizes it above literally everything
- Zero legislative voting record to defend later
That last one is underrated. She never had to cast a hard vote. She arrived in the briefing room with a clean sheet.
What she carried out of it
Two things, and neither was good: roughly $326,370 in unpaid campaign debt that would still be on the books when she entered the White House, and an FEC complaint from End Citizens United alleging her campaign took donations over the legal limit without properly refunding them.
That's the next post, and it's the least-covered real story about her.
Next up: the campaign finance hangover — $326K in debt and about $200K in over-limit donations.